Early this clear, frosty morning we were standing in the calm and beautiful Berlin Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery.
For me and Rhiannon, this was our first Remembrance Day service. What a moving place to experience this emotionally charged ceremony.
We wore our poppies with pride. Initially we'd felt a little awkward about wearing this symbolic flower but in the company of others from the Commonwealth today they weren't out of place.
The ceremony started with the Black Kilts, a Berlin-based pipes and drums band marching up the through the grave lines. Standard bearers carried themselves immaculately.
And then a lone bugler sounded those poignant notes of The Last Post.
Now for some reason, I cannot bear The Last Post. It never fails to bring me to tears. It's so mournful and the meaning behind it so heartbreakingly sad I cannot help myself. I struggled to hold back the tears. So many people have more reason to cry than me. The last members of my family lost to war were my great-grandfather and great-uncles in the First World Ward.
Wreaths were laid at the Stone of Remembrance by representatives of various Commonwealth countries and other groups. Children from the Berlin British School each laid a single sunflower on 15 graves. Prayers and speeches were given.
Rhiannon and her frozen feet went to look at the names on the graves and was uncharacteristically silent with the knowledge that all the fallen were in their late teens and early twenties.
The cemetery was created in 1945 as a burial ground for air crew and prisoners of war who died whilst interred in the Berlin area and in East Germany. The cemetery lies under the protection of the British Crown, and so belongs to the UK. In total there are 3,576 graves in the cemetery. Several are unmarked.
At the end of the service we headed back to the car. We were very cold. But we remembered the hardships our forces endure and endured, and kept quiet.
We could leave this corner of a foreign field and go home.
The Soldier by Rupert Brooke
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.